Friday, January 01, 2016

10 Years of Making A Mark

First of all I'd like to take the opportunity to wish a Happy New Year from Making A Mark here in London.

May you and your art enjoy the best of times in 2016 wherever you live around the world.
Next I have a celebration.......

New Year fireworks in London 1st January 2016

Making A Mark was born on 13th December 2005 in terms of the first time I published a post. However I did then change both the design of the blog and its name before I went 'public'!

Making A Mark went 'public' at the beginning of 2006. That's a decade ago!

10 years and 3,027 published posts later this blog has had more than 3.4 million unique visitors. Since Blogger started counting it's had c.8.5 million pageviews.

BTW that's an average of just over 300 blog posts a year!

Where nearly 50,000 visitors to Making A Mark came from in December 2015

I have to confess I had no idea when I started quite how many people would read my blog or that they would live all over the world. I'm still taken aback when meeting artists at exhibitions to find that they know who I am!

I've always written the blog for me and it's changed as I have changed.

There again I've always been one who likes sharing information that I think others will also find interesting and/or useful - and consequently that accounts for the amount of digging around and finding things out that has happened on this blog in the last 10 years!

10 of the most popular posts in the last 10 years

One of the reasons why my blog remains popular is that a lot of the blog posts I write remain relevant past their publication date - and my archives are very well visited!

Here's a selection of some of the most popular posts over the last 10 years with an emphasis on those which continue to have relevance to today.

Van Gogh: Drawing media and techniques (2007) - one from the days when I did projects about specific artists. I remember I loved writing this post - mainly because of the reading around and the looking at the drawings he did.

Which are the best books about oil painting?(2011) - this is a type of blog post I've loved to do in the past. It enables the "wisdom of crowds" to generate good content for people who read this blog. In this instance most of the value comes in the comments from those offering their recommendations as to the best book about oil painting - for artists of all abilities.

How to make labels for an art exhibition (2012) - sometimes posts are popular because nobody else has ever written about a topic! This one was written after I did the labels for the first London Urban Sketchers exhibition - and I confess it was partly so I'd remember what I had to do the next time!

9 comments:

You should know, must know, what a rich and generous gift you share with us here, Making a Mark, and associated publications.I am a mature student of a Fine Arts Programme, and find myself consistently recommending my peers and tutors to explore and research your resources, especially in matters of establishing themselves, adopting best professional Practices.

You go beyond, exhaustively researching and polling, to trawl for the most current innovations and discoveries, to present a wise and discriminating eye, to challenge us all to raise our game, to really critique and reflect on our work against best measures.

If there is any one thing I might not be quite as enthusiastic about, it is that your blogs are so rich, and highly functional, that I just find my own stumbling efforts, lack of discipline, are so pathetically weak by comparison, that it's hard to find motivation to improve them whe there is such a gulf! But seriously, again you've made it easy for us, done the leg work with really clear recommendations on hosts, styles, content, etc., and I will resurrect my blog very soon.

I echo the above comments and add my congratulations - ten years is a significant milestone. I am so impressed by the consistently high standard of the posts covering such a wide range of topics.Thank you so much. All the best for 2016.

A super comprehensive affair, Katherine Tyrrell’s blog is a go-to for punters and artists alike. Making a Mark includes useful annual itineraries of major UK art exhibitions (though the bulk are London-based) as well as a meticulous calendar of competitions for artists to enter. Expect in-depth news, analysis and a focus on fostering new talentCreativeTourist - Top Art Blogs UK 2016

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